Wednesday, 7 December 2016

Hello crafty folks,
Welcome to my page. its already December! ! Yes…its December…month of festivities, holidays and the countdown
to welcoming the New Year.

Today, I would like to show you a step by step to making a
Christmas décor project using Folk art paints and texture paints from PLAID.

My recycle elements for this project are these humble,
ordinary looking pill bottles( these are approx 4 inches in height!).

Here is how I made it..

Step1- Once the bottles were cleaned and the labels removed,
I gave a coat of white gesso to all the bottles and painted them with home chalk paints.I colored
the 3 bottles in 3 different colors.

Step2- For the lids, I took some air dry clay and wrapped
the lid with it to form tiny hats and let them dry overnight. I had some little
Christmas print outs in my stash and adhered them to the bottle using modge
podge. These were just 2 inches in height, just perfect fit on the bottle. I
inked them with archival brown ink before sticking.

Step3- I applied one step crackle paint to the bottles and
let them take its own course to dry. Once the cracks appeared, I applied some
burnt umber acrylics and then rubbed it with a wet wipe. This way the cracks
got filled up with brown paint and voila! The bottles had vintage look. I gave
them a coat of Folk art home décor Varnish and they were good to go.

By now, the caps had dried and I painted them in different
colors. For one I had snow dripping on it using the Folk art texture paint
(snow white). I for one, love this texture finish and have had it as a feature
in all my Christmas projects. It’s probably the easiest way to give snow
effects, just so REAL! I had a little bit of it on the snowy image on the bottle
too.

Step4- I wanted each bottle to have a different element and
so for the other, I had some moss dripping on the lids. Here again the Folk art
painted finishes came to my rescue. It’s just so dimensional you can actually
feel the mossy texture. I also had the same poured onto a wooden disc that I
intend using as a deco platter later in the project. You can actually see that
I have used just a stirrer to pour out the texture paint on to the disc as I
wait for it to dry, you can see the dimension later.

Step5- I started to add some embellishments to the lids from
my stash again. I stamped some music notes onto plain paper and distressed it
with vintage photo DI and then stuck it to an empty cereal box and cut out the
alphabets “JOY”. I have layered 3 cartons to get a chipboard feel to the
alphabets and inked that too with brown archival int. I then heat embossed some
gold on to edges of the alphabets and stuck them to the lids with hot glue gun.
All of them have snow dripping on them too!

Here
is a look at all the caps. I tucked in some coconut coir and some red pollens
for the “J” cap.

For the “O” I liked the overload of snow on the caps on the
rims!

The “Y” cap had some moss and green foliage

Step5- The bottles were ready to hit the final spot for decoration!
I dressed up a wooden disc with glass crystals and placed all the bottles on
it. The rimes of the disc are covered with moss and snow. I also kept some pine
cones and foliage dipped is snow as additional embellishments. Here is the
final look captured in different moods and locations.

I like how this project turned out..a vintage white
Christmas! Do let me know your feedback on the same.

Last few months have been months of festivities in India and
it’s been raining sweets here, lol! One such thing is the chocolate box, which
I was happy when it got empty than when it was full!

I have been wanting to play with metal and this chocolate
tin was just right to experiment what I had in mind. My latest toy in my studio
is the sewing machine and I wanted a company to it to guard all my threads and
needles…and hence the birth of this project, a sewing box!

An easy project that I managed to do in a couple of hours
but had this idea in my mind, a box so vintage like a grand moms hand me down!
I wanted an old looking box to hold my sewing treasures and so decided on a
vintage theme! Do I need to say so!

The box was given a liberal coat of gesso and once dry, I decided
to work on the focal point of the lid.

I decoupaged a floral tissue to old book page .

I am so in
love with peek of text thru the tissue…this is my current favorite and I think
I will be using this is in a few more projects to come. It’s an instant vintage
look! I then had that decoupaged on the
lid. Once dry, I played with Deco Art acrylics yellow ochre, raw umber and green.

I merged these 3 colors to give a distressed look to the
lid.

For the base, I gave 2 costs of raw umber acrylics and then
played with the doily stencil from Deco Art. I have used yellow ochre acrylics to sponge in thru the
stencil.

I liked the vintage look of these 2 color combinations. I
also dry brushed some yellow ochre randomly.

Once all of it was dry, I gave a coat of varnish and my box
was ready.

It proudly its next to its BIG friend and promises to help
me in my future projects! Here , have a look…..